


Legends in Scarlet and Black

by Deborah Laymon (dejla), dejla



Category: Highlander: The Series, Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy, Scarlet Pimpernel - TV (1999)
Genre: Community: wip_amnesty; non-canonical Immortal, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-07
Updated: 2010-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:39:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dejla/pseuds/Deborah%20Laymon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/dejla/pseuds/dejla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Immortals meddle. Sometimes they aid, sometimes they oppose. Jehanne d'Arc opposes the excesses of the French Revolution--and if she does, so does Kronos. For amusement value, if nothing else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legends in Scarlet and Black

**Legends in Scarlet and Black**

Paul-Armand Chauvelin pulled the drapes back in his office to allow the early morning sun access. For a moment, it blinded him, and he stepped to the side, away from the light and out of sight, an instinctive reaction to the number of rifles available in Paris these days and the many factions prepared to wield them. At least from the windows of the Palais du Justice, he could not see La Force looming over Paris.

Turning back to his desk, he noted dust scattered across it and the smudges of old mud on the floor. This was Leffie's day to clean the offices of the Committee of Public Safety. To clean his offices. Usually, she finished by the time he walked through the door, leaving her time to polish his boots. With condemnations and tribunal hearings right and left, sudden disappearances made him uneasy. And Leffie was more vulnerable than most of Paris' citizens. He strode back to the door, yanked it open, and bellowed to the guard. "Portier!"

"Yes, sir!" Portier jumped to his feet.

"Where's our girl today?"

The seventeen-year-old blinked; his jaw hung open a second before he remembered to close it and speak. "Who? The half-wit?"

Chauvelin turned, narrowing his eyes, and measured the boy for the guillotine with his glare.

Portier stammered a correction. "I mean, of course, Leffie. I mean, ah, Citizeness Durand, Citizen Chauvelin."

"Who else would **I** mean, Sergeant?"

"No one else, of course, Citizen. She hasn't arrived yet."

He walked back into his office, with the boy trailing at his heels. Chauvelin unwrapped a _cigarito_ , lit a spill and transferred the flame to his _cigarito_. "She's late. That's not like her, is it?"

"No, sir." A thought made it into Portier's brain. "Should I go and see if she's outside somewhere?"

He flicked an annoyed glance at the man. "That might be a place to start."

The sergeant made it only to the top of the stairs before saying, "Ah, here is the citizeness," rather in the tone of a man who'd managed to dodge a duellist's bullet.

Olivie Durand limped through the door, leaning on the great curled knob of her stick. She straightened, and squeaked out, " _Liberté, fraternité, égalité_ , Citizen," her usual response to seeing anyone with a rosette on their clothes. The bywords had given her her nickname among his officers.

He inclined his head, drew in a breath of tobacco smoke, and said, "Mouse, you're late."

She curtsied, holding the position as long as possible, and said, "Pardon, citizen. A thousand apologies," before switching to a bobbing attempt to placate him, her eyes cast down to the ground. _But the Mouse never looks anyone in the face, especially me_.

He stepped closer to her, wrinkling his nose at the especially foul odour from her ragged clothes. Above the port-wine birthmark that disfigured her cheek and lower jaw, he noticed something darker, half-hidden under dirt. He grabbed her chin and hauled her face up to look better at it.

Olivie squeaked again, and tried to pull free. He tightened his fingers; she shuddered and froze, with an occasional shiver of fear breaking through her frozen-deer stance.

The bruises around her left eye and over her cheekbone was not birthmark nor stain, though the purpling had already begun fading.

"How did this happen, Mouse?" Too late he recognized the habitual harshness in his voice.

Her shivering escalated into shuddering. "Pardon, citizen, pardon..."

He shook his head. "No, I'm not angry at you." Half-witted missed the mark. The Revolution's scythe had left her in a shrinking, cowering state at the first harsh word: half-mad as well as half-wit. He tried to soften his voice. "Did your brother strike you?"

She would have fallen on the floor and grovelled at his feet if he had allowed her. "Please, Citizen Chauvelin, please no..."

He'd seen her brother, too, though not to exchange words with. A villianous man with a scar running from scalp to jaw and eyes as mad as his sister's were vacant. The Mouse was barely half his size. "Jacquot, Mouse. Did Jacquot strike you?"

Now she abandoned all resistance and wept.

The stench clinging to her--he gagged. He stepped back, and she dropped, cowering on the floor. "Portier!"

The soldier trotted back into the room, an expression of determined woodenness on his sunburnt face. "Yes, Citizen?"

"Take the citizeness to Noémi. Tell her the girl needs a bath. And get her hair properly washed."

For all of Portier's vulgarity regarding Olivie Dupuis's intelligence, he was gentle enough with her physically. She seemed less frightened of him than of Chauvelin himself. "Come along, Leffie. You know old Noémi, gives you cakes to take home. Remember?"

A nod barely responded. He coaxed her onto her feet.

"Portier!"

"Yes, sir?"

Chauvelin fumbled for money, and put several _sous_ into the sergeant's hand. "Have Noémi get her some clean clothes as well."

"Yes, sir." Portier led the Mouse out of the room.

Chauvelin opened the windows. The effluvia from the sewers smelt better than the half-starved half-wit. No doubt her brother's gentle ministrations left the bruises. No reason the Revolution should be any kinder to imbeciles than to normal people. Revolution scorned mercy.

He had burnt the sheet of expensive notepaper once the message burnt itself into his brain. He would have known that writing anywhere. The fact that no salutation nor signature bracketed the brief note, thereby offering no clues to the writer, was possibly the only other kind act he'd known from Blakeney.

 _Your daughter died before we could leave the Vendée. We would gladly have taken her to England and cared for her. Whether it would comfort you to know that she died for love, I cannot guess. We buried her in the graveyard at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, and erected a small cross. My deepest regrets._

And had he been less angry with his father, willing to stay and face him out over Thérèse, he might have known his daughter.

Instead, he now wasted pity on a _imbécile_ girl crushed by the Revolution and abused by what was left of her family. Slow and patient questions over the past six months had gleaned enough from her to tell him that she had no one left to her but Jacquot, and from her scrapes and bruises, the man had a temper.

The Revolution's birth required mess. And blood. And in its new-formed state, it spared no mercy to anyone, neither half-wit girls nor gently-raised ones, and certainly not to a man so close to Robespierre.

There was nothing left of his family or Boissy now. He had clawed his way back into the Incorruptible's good graces, and there he would stay.

 _What does it matter if I expend a little kindness on a half-witted girl?_

 

He was on his second _cigarito_ and his fifteenth memo of new changes to the Law of Suspects when Leffie slipped into the room and set a bucket of soapy water on the floor. He spared a glance, and caught her looking at him, with something like confusion and wonder in her eyes. As soon as she met his eyes, she dropped her head and scrubbed with renewed vigour.

The dark blue skirt and blouse looked clean and new. Noémi had obeyed his instructions as well as he had expected. The once-greasy hair now fit neatly under a white cap, with only a few strands loose at brow and back. When she turned, he saw that she now wore shoes, not sabots, and the soles showed fresh leather instead of mud.

He leaned back and spent another moment examining her. Her face, clean, showed the bruising to be much less than he'd first thought, under the dirt. It also made the birthmark brighter and more disfiguring, but that was nothing compared to the fact that she looked neat and clean and smelled only of soap. All in all, a good day's work.

It took her an hour to remove the majority of the dirt and boottracks from his floor. She then commandeered his boots and the blacking, and began her painstaking work to turn them into mirrors.

"Olivie," he said.

She froze. A wary eye flicked his way.

"Leffie," he said, and saw her shoulders relax. He considered it, then softened his voice again as much as possible before he expanded his words. "Mouse, leave my boots and come here."

She looked at the boot, then set it down as if it were glass. She wiped her hands on her apron, then pulled herself upright with the assistance of her stick. Standing in front of him, she tucked her hands behind her. "Citizen?" She looked for all the world like a schoolgirl standing in front of a teacher, waiting to be punished.

He swung his head down and away, trying not to give rein to the smile pulling at his mouth. When he looked up, though, she had lost her rigid posture, and he gave vent to a chuckle, leaning back in his chair. He shook his head at her. "Now, have I ever treated you unkindly, Mouse?"

"No, Citizen." But her brow creased:  as if, indeed, he were catechising her.

"There is a room in the cellar here, at the Palais du Justice, which could be arranged for you to inhabit. To live in. No more struggling through the streets, no more problems getting home. A safe place."

She followed his words, her frowns marking her comprehension. Then she cocked her head, and the half-wit air seemed to have more sense attached to it. "But my brother, Citizen."

"Ah," he said, and pressed his lips together. He took another swallow of smoke, then met her eyes. "No, your brother may not stay here."

She started to shake her head as soon as he said no.

"Mouse, you'll be safer here."

"Not without my brother," she said. Her voice trembled, but she met his eyes. Her lower lip quivered.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Ah, girl, don't start with the tears." He waved his hand, dismissing the situation. "Very well, then. Stay with your brother."

She bobbed another courtesy. "Thank you, citizen."

"Don't thank me," he said, irritably. He reached for his coat, and started to shrug into it. To his surprise, the Mouse attempted to help him, the first time she'd come that close to him without being summoned. A kindness for a kindness? At least now she smelt only of soap. He permitted the assistance; it was as proper as if she'd been trained as a servant. And perhaps she had--what did he know of her anyway except that she was resident in Paris at the time of the Revolution and had a brother named Jacques who carried a villianous scar down his face?

When he turned, he saw her eyeing him thoughtfully. He reached for his hat and picked up his stick. "Do I meet with your approval?"

That got him an embarrassed smile before she ducked her head.

On impulse, he flicked her under the chin with his finger. "You're a good girl, Mouse." He pulled the door shut behind him, nodded to Portier, and set off for his first meeting, secure in the knowledge that not even Fumier would enter his office while he wasn't there.

*** *** ***

The half-witted girl stood unmoving in the room until the echoes of Citizen Chauvelin's boots on the flaggings disappeared down the stairs. No need to check the door. No one would dare enter while he was away, save Robespierre, and he was going to meet the man now.

Once the echoes died, she darted to the desk.

The Citizen kept an admirably neat working surface. It took no more than seconds to find the roll of planned arrests for that evening. She had paper and pen out in another second, and the bottle of lemon juice after that.

Noémi, bless her aged heart, possessed kindness in inverse proportion to her sight. Pen, ink, paper--all were invisible to her. Privacy she could give a dirty ragged girl, and did. Clothes she chose by touch, not sight, and so the cloth was as good as could be purchased. The new garments hid a hidden pouch as well as the ragged ones had.

The woman who used the name 'Olivie Durand', among others, paused for a second to make a mental note that ragged clothes and applied foul odours would not give Chauvelin that much pause if he were intent on a goal. At least he had not noticed anything to give her away. She paused, crossed herself, and continued writing. Eighty-three names. _Hurry_.

She did not look around while she bent to her copying. Chauvelin's office had one door, and that one squeaked. The Palais de Justice had marble floors, and boots echoed on them. She dipped and redipped the pen as she scribbled on the paper and the lemon juice dried.

Three names she recognized. Three names. In sequence. Jehanne paused, cast her mind back to find the cell connection; all three men were unknown to each other. However, one man knew all three. Perhaps coincidence?

 _In this world, at this time, you have come to believe in coincidence?_ The memory of Elek's voice rose up in her head; she grimaced at it. Her very concern of Elek's reaction to a possible threat had kept her from mentioning her suspicions prior to this.

At the top of the last page, she found another two names. She gritted her teeth and searched her memory again. Only Regnard knew them both, and again, they were in separate cells from each other--and from the previous three names. _Ergo_ \--Regnard was an informer.

When the list of names was finally complete, she folded the paper and tucked her tools back under her skirt. She noticed a drop or two of juice on the desk, and scrubbed it away with her petticoat.

A rap at the door made her glance up.

Portier said, "Leffie? Are you well?"

"Yes, citizen. One little moment." She gave Chauvelin's desk another look to be sure she hadn't left anything out of order, then took bucket in one hand and stick in the other, and shifted back into Leffie's stance and shuffling walk, using the stick to punctuate her steps.

Leffie straightened up as soon as she saw Portier. " _Liberté, fraternité, égalité_ , Citizen!"

He bowed, just a little. "Good afternoon, Citizeness. We'll see you on _Quintidi_?"

" _Oui_ , Citizen." _Quintidi_ , two days away. The Republic's budget no longer allowed for cleaning every day.

No one paid attention to her as she hobbled through the streets. She still crossed and recrossed her steps. Finally she came to the apartment she and Elek rented for an minute sum. Once she was inside and the door fastened, she abandoned her hobbling and took the steps as fast as possible.

The scent of soup greeted her as she came through the door. She put the stick against the wall in its accustomed place. A glance into the pot showed her that it was cabbage and not nearly done. The pitcher of water next to the basin by the door was cool; she poured most of it back into the barrel and added hot water from the stove. The water and the solution removed the birthmark as well as the dust of the street from her face.

Elek pushed the curtain aside and came into the kitchen. "You're late, Jehanne. What happened?" His eyes narrowed, sweeping over her new clothes, and his mouth twisted in an expression she knew well.

"Apparently I was over-enthusiastic with the stink. Citizen Chauvelin disapproved."

That information bought her a raised eyebrow as he crossed his arms over his chest. "And bought you new clothes?

"He supplied the _effectiv_. Noémi bought the actual garments."

"And she's as near-blind as makes no difference, so you were safe in bathing?"

"She wasn't standing over me, no." Jehanne kept a wary sidelong eye on him. "And neither was he. You're reading too much into him, you know."

"No, I don't know."

She nodded at the soup pot. "That will keep for a bit. I need to get to Arturo."

"I can take the paper."

Jehanne shook her head. "I don't want to risk it. You know you're too easily recognized."

That stopped him again. This time, an open scowl intensified the scar down the side of his face. "Problems?"

She crossed into the back of the room. He followed her.

He kept his voice low, in itself not a good sign. "Jehanne."

As she went through the steps of discarding her female garb, she fumbled for the right words. _Not that there are **any** right words with him on this._ "I don't like some of the names on the list."

"Who is he?"

"I only have suspicions at present," she said.

The low tone developed a growl. "Suspicions are better dealt with at first sign."

"Too much blood, even these days, is too dangerous."

  

 GAP HERE--Sorry for the inconvience, still in construction.

 

Chauvelin inhaled once more and savoured the _cigarito_ smoke, studying her. "The revolution is beyond mercy, Alouette. The revolution requires the overthrow of bourgeois sympathies, aristo sensibilities, and pious sentimentality."

The dark hair swung back and her eyes flashed up to his. Ah, some passion there, some spontaneous reaction at last. Strange grey eyes, his lark had--not the marvelous blue eyes Marguerite could tear out your soul with, but now, for this moment, he could not see Marguerite St. Just at all for this Marguerite in front of him.

"Then the revolution is neither father nor mother, _Citoyen_ ," she said. "The revolution is a boy beaten by his father until he turns into a feral cur and savages all of the world he can reach."

For one moment, the memory of his father's contorted face blotted out the world. He could have believed that somehow, in some impossible fashion, this girl he'd picked up out of a common tavern knew about the Vendée, knew about his father, knew about his dead daughter. A second later, common sense overrode superstition. He put the _cigarito_ down, and reached out, lazily, without revealing a threat.

Alouette did not flinch; in fact, her chin lifted.

His fingers fit easily around her throat. He tightened his grip just enough to hold her if she struggled. "Strong words for such a little bird. Aren't you afraid of speaking treason to an official of the Committee of Public Safety?"

The pulse in her throat beat regularly and evenly. She did not struggle against his touch, as a wild bird might have. "Is it now treason to speak the truth?"

He looked at the floor, black laughter bubbling up in his throat. "A **very** brave little bird," he said, musingly, and changed his grip into a caress, stroking her pulse with his thumb, then turning his hand to run the back of it down her soft skin to the swell of her breasts. "Alouette, it is always treason to speak truth to a man in power." He might have been touching a pillow; she neither shivered nor blushed; he couldn't see that she reacted to the intimacy at all. "Especially when the speaker is a woman talking to a man."

"Citoyen Chauvelin," she said, and he heard an answering black humour in her voice, "That has been so since the beginning of time. That the Revolution adopts it is nothing unexpected."


End file.
